The use of radiation therapy to treat cancer is well known. Typically, radiation therapy involves directing a beam of high energy proton, photon, ion, or electron radiation (“therapeutic radiation”) into a target or target volume (e.g., a tumor or lesion) in a patient.
It is noted that cyclotrons are the most cost efficient particle accelerators for state of the art particle therapy. Cyclotrons are fixed energy accelerators and require a beam degrader for energy modulation of the treatment beam. However, there are disadvantages associated with cyclotrons.
For example, degraders have the disadvantage that they only provide relatively slow energy modulation in the range of several 100 ms (milliseconds) and feature high beam losses, which inevitably lead to large neutron generation requiring costly radiation shielding.